Adventures in Bike Repair: A New Chain

January 10, 2012

By Matt Sedlar

An experienced bike rider will read this post and think "So what?" But as someone who has always done little to no maintenance on his bike, I was pretty excited that I managed to replace my chain last weekend. I would say it's just as easy as patching or replacing a tire, but replacing a chain does require a special tool and a bit more patience, especially if you're like me and you don't have a rack to keep the bike in place.

Popping the old chain off was fun. As I've written here before, I have no idea how old it is. I'm the third owner, and I have confirmed with our friends (the previous owners) that it was never replaced. As you can see from the picture below, the metal is pretty worn. I say it was fun because this is the part in the process where I knew even if I screwed up, I didn't really care because it's an old chain.

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Getting the new chain on was less fun. I made sure the bike was in a gear that placed the old chain furthest from the frame on the freewheel and the crankset. In hindsight, I needed something to hold the derailleur in place. The minute the chain comes out, it snaps up. I knew this was going to happen and marked the place where the derailleur should extend to for the new chain. I didn't realize, however, what a pain in the butt it would be to keep the derailleur in place while I connected the links. The new chain came with a coupling guide pin, so that wasn't a problem, but there were many curse words while I tried to connect the ends and keep that derailleur steady.

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With the new chain on and lubed, the only task left was to take it out for a ride and pray it didn't break apart instantly, resulting in a horrifying crash. The first thing I noticed is that the bike was a lot quieter. Other than that, there's no real difference from before - well, aside from having a new chain that's presumably less likely to fail on me. It's still sticking when I shift into the highest gear, but I've already attributed that to bent teeth on the freewheel. In other words, you're next, old freewheel. Perhaps I'll replace the crankset at some point, too, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

I initially went into this project thinking "I'm going to just buy a new bike," but this is actually a lot more interesting. Sure, the bike is heavy for a race and needs some work, but this way I'm gaining an appreciation for how it works and the know-how to diagnose and fix it when things go wrong. Like the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. I'd say my experience with bike maintenance is a pretty weak link. Time to fix that.

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